MH-042 Bibio - Ovals And EmeraldsTake the layered, unhurried folk exuberance of a Bibio album, replace the source material with something that brings to mind calliopes and cymbalophones, cast it in sepia tone, run it through organ grinder speakers and you’ve got the limited edition EP, Ovals And Emeralds. Marrying musical sincerity with electronic jousting Bibio constructs a sweetly disorienting wall of whirs and electronic moans to create a soundtrack well suited for a gauzy aquarium carnival. Released exclusively on emerald green vinyl, the album packaging is appropriate to its beautiful yet disorienting feel. Dark at times, Ovals and Emeralds is still Bibio, rollicking and full of musical motion. For all your killer-clown-goes-electro-folk kicks, kids, step right up.

Tracklist

01. Oval Emerald Vertigo

02. The Death Of A Trapeze Artist

03. Carosello Ellitico

04. Six String Marenghi

05. Polycoulrophon

06. Segee And The Indian

Release Details

Release Date: 03/03/2009

Running Time: 25:45

Download/Available/$3.00

1X10"/Not Yet Released

LOSSLESS/Available/$5.00

Territory: World

Reviews Summary

File this one under 'repeat listening' – indeed, Ovals & Emeralds needs to be given time to reveal its full detail. - Cyclic Defrost / Amidst the wall of sound are faded music boxes and rich bonsai soundscapes that hypnotize you like a demented carnie at the circus gates. - The Decibel Tolls / Bibio strikes again! - The Music Lobby

West Midlands, UK-based electronic producer Stephen Wilkinson has previously released three albums as Bibio, with his combination of treated electronic drones, field recordings and folk influences calling to mind the similarly pastoral likes of Boards Of Canada. He’s also something of a prolific guy, this latest six track EP (his last release for Mush before signing to Warp) emerging just a couple of months after his preceding third album Vignetting The Compost. While that aforementioned album showed Wilkinson’s use of folk elements in full evidence however, Ovals & Emeralds is a considerably more deconstructed affair. In this case, Wilkinson’s predominant focus is on working with detuned and electronically treated vinyl sources, resulting in a beatless collection of tracks that sound sepia-toned, as if they were beamed in from some other age. Opening track "Oval Emerald Vertigo" offers up a good taste of this approach, sending what sounds like a loop of vintage soul strings rolling against disorienting layers of vinyl drag and delayed-out harmonics, the resulting woozy psychedelic fusion at points calling to mind an ice-cream van slowing down.

By contrast, "The Death Of A Trapeze Artist" sees blurry, phased out piano elements slowly giving way to delicate treated guitar textures and wafting harmonic ambience, before "Carosello Elitticco" sees some of the familiar folk-derived elements returning to the foreground as feathery, plucked acoustic guitar notes spiral against a beatific backdrop of gentle flutes and sampled birdsong, a melodic aesthetic that also spills over into "Six String Marenghi," shortly before things waft out into shimmering synthetic ambience. It’s the seven minute long "Polycoulrophon" that really offers up the strangest trip here, with looped and detuned flute samples gradually accelerating at dizzying speed, only to get sucked down into a black hole of filtering, the resulting eerie ambient wander amidst spooky, dubbed-out textures and spiraling, melodic notes only being broken as proceedings rise back out through a wash of glistening vibraphone melodics. File this one under 'repeat listening' – indeed, Ovals & Emeralds needs to be given time to reveal its full detail. - Cyclic Defrost